Facing Your Fears About Hand-Dyed Yarns // Episode 98 // Taking Back Friday // a fibre arts vlog

hey there so we have been reading through all of the responses to our sweet georgia serving from a couple of weeks ago and we read every single response we honestly take all your feedbacks super seriously and in our reading we found that an overwhelming number of knitters have very deep-seated fears about working with hand dyed yarns so in today's video I wanted to help you face those fears [Music] hi there i'm felicia from sweet georgia and sweet georgia if you didn't already know is a hand dyed yarn company based in Vancouver Canada we've been making hand dyed yarns for almost 15 years now this year is taking back Friday this is a space where we come every Friday to talk about knitting and spinning and weaving and dyeing I enjoy talking about the fiber arts and specifically I like to talk about making time to make things one of the most fundamental things that I believe in value is that it's important to our well-being to take time to make things that time is precious and when you spend hours and hours making a sweater or a shawl from hand dyed yarn it's important that the yarn perform well so that you don't feel like you've just wasted that precious precious time so reading through the list of things that knitters weaver spinners and crochet errs fear is absolutely critical to us as a team of people who make hand dyed yarn so that we can make sure that the yarn that we make is faultless if at all possible now among the survey results we discovered ten major fears that you have when it comes to knitting with hand dyed yarn so let's talk about each one and I'll offer some ways of approaching or resolving each of those situations number one the biggest fear the biggest fear is the fear of bleeding this is the biggest fear that we all have when we're working with hand dyed yarns the fear of bleeding is the fear that you'll knit something out of hand dyed yarn and then when you go to wash it the color will either run out of it and leave it paler or duller than when you started or that the color will run out of it and into another lighter color yarn both of those situations are terrible and to be avoided if at all possible before I dive into the bleeding discussion I want to preface this by saying that I think true bleeding is hopefully pretty rare the way that I personally define bleeding is like this if I were to submerge a yarn or a fabric into cool or warm water and literally plumes of color are flowing out of the fabric that's what I consider bleeding if however I'm washing or wetting my knitted fabric during the wet blocking process and there is just a tinge of color in the water bath that I don't consider bleeding that's just some excess dye that is rinsing out and that should go away within about two or three rinses with some colors like magenta or turquoise it might take five or six rinses but it's still just excess dye but if we're talking about tons of color like it looks like ink that's flowing out of the fabric that's when it's an issue and if it happens to you with one of our yarns then you just straight-up call us email us and we we sort that out with you so now let me first talk about what the dyeing process is and then what bleeding is in the dyeing process in order to get color onto these skeins of wool and protein fiber we use acid dyes so acid dyes in combination with the presence of a weak acid plus the addition of the correct amount of heat will produce a permanent bond between the color and the fiber they will permanently be bonded to each other and cannot be separated acid dyes are beautiful to work with because when all goes well all of the color in the dye bath will bind to the receptor sites on the wool and then there will be no color left in the dye bath all the color will be in the yarn and the pot will just have plain old clear water that's the goal at the end of the day when we're dying 100% clear pots even if the pots are clear we still give the yarn a little bit of a rinse with clear water before we spin out the excess water and hang those gains to dry now there are a few things that can go wrong with the dyeing process and prevent those permanent bonds from happening between the yarn and the color first it's possible that the acid is maybe forgotten and not added to the pot and so the acid environment is not there the dyes can't bind and so the loose dye will just be left in the dye and then wash away any color that is in the yarn won't actually be fully bonded to the yarn so it will likely wash out too when you go to wash and block your cloth the second possibility is that the temperature doesn't get high enough for those permanent bonds to form so we call that the temperature at which the dyes will strike so if the temperature never gets high enough the dyes won't bind and will eventually be prone to washing out as well and then the third possibility is that with a very very intense color formula that may be used as a really large quantity of dye it's very possible that there are just not enough dye receptors on the wool to accept and bind all the molecules of dye that are in the dye pod so in this case the excess dye will be left in the dye pot it might also happen that the excess dye will coat the outside of the yarn and it rubs off on your fingers as you knit with it this is called crossing when the dye color rubs off so there are some aspects of good dyeing and the prevention of bleeding that are the responsibility of the dire things like creating a really good formula or a recipe that doesn't use an inappropriate amount of dye ensuring that you add enough acid in order to lower the pH to a point where the dyes will bind properly and heating up the yarns to the right temperature for the right amount of time then it's also the dyers responsibility to rinse and wash out any of the excess dye until the water is clear so some dye colors are inherently problematic things like turquoise is the problem magenta is a problem mustard yellow is a problem red is a problem like there's actually quite a number of them that cause problems and some of these colors don't exhaust easily and they might take a significant amount of extra time to cook or to rinse but ultimately that's our job as dyers is to take care of those details now there are some responsibilities of the knitter or the weaver who's using the yarn at the other end and i will tell this to everyone who will listen but if you buy a brand new pair of dark wash jeans it's probably not a great idea to sit on a white couch you know some sort of rubbing off is gonna happen some sort of transfer between your jeans and that white couch that's gonna happen you know a couple of years ago I sewed a quilt for my daughter and it had all these beautiful half square triangles all these white half square triangles on the top and then for the back I thought it would be super cool if I had a dark purple backing to my quilt and so not thinking very much and when I washed it the purple seeped into all of the white triangles and my quilt came out pink at the end of the day and so how could this have been prevented I could have pre washed all of the colors separately which is what they recommend when you are doing some quilting too so this is typically something I started to recommend to everybody who's wanting to knit fair isle or stranded colorwork with very light and very dark colors together pre wash your yarns now you're probably thinking why would I need to pre wash my yarns if the Dyer already washes them and ensures that no color is coming out of them well it is this very bizarre thing that we've discovered over the years that water in different areas of the world and in the country have different chemicals in it different hardness different softness and all of this can actually affect how much color may or may not wash out of it so even if we rinse the yarns here on the west coast until they're completely clear when the yarn ends up on the East Coast and somebody goes to wet block their finished garment is true you still might see some color in the wash water even though it was clear at our end so if you are making a one color garment it's not really a big deal but if you're making a fair isle sweater with white and dark navy or charcoal or lollipop then I would suggest pre-washing just to be extra safe you could even knit a small test swatch with your colors together and then wash and block that to see if any of the colors run together and if you've ever had a situation with kracken we just found that there's no real good solution for cracking you can try to wash this game some more but more often than not it will just still continue to croc it's more of issue with the dye formula than it is with the the dyeing process it's yeah it's just that dye formula with that particular fiber needs to be fixed so again if you find yourself in that situation you give us a call or an email so if you are buying hand dyed yarn from a reputable responsible and reliable hand Dyer then bleeding yarn should not really be an issue but to be safe if you are making a project that mixes two or more high contrast or very saturated colors together then I would suggest making a test swatch and or pre washing your yarns just in case number two is the fear of running out of yarn so if you and I were at a yarn shop together and you said I want to make this project out of this gorgeous hand dyed colorway that I found but I'm afraid I might run out of yarn my suggestion would be to buy an extra skein of yarn just in case I know it's an added expense but it will be an even more expensive mistake if you find yourself running out of yarn when there you're 3/4 of the way through knitting your second sleeve so if you have that extra skein and you haven't wounded into the ball at the end of the day it might be possible for you to return it or exchange that skein for something else depending on the yarn shop that you go to I know the yarn shop that we have here in Richmond it used to offer the service where they would reserve and set aside an extra skein of yarn for your sweater so if you bought five balls they would save the sixth ball for you put it in a bag label it with your name on it and then you could come back within three months to get that skein if you needed it and if you didn't come back within three months then they would just return that skein to the shelf it was a very thoughtful service I don't know if they still do it or not but it was thoughtful when they did it so if you don't have that service available to you I just recommend you get the extra skein just in case number three is the fear of pooling now as you will know hand dyed yarn is died in a hank form so like in this format so it's it's very possible in this format that you have regular rhythm repetition of color so you know there might be spots that might be a little bit lighter a little bit darker and every time you knit one cycle of that yarn you'll knit to the lighter spot or the darker spot and depending on what circumference you're knitting or what the width of your project is it might be possible that those lighter spots or darker spots might start to stack and they'll produce areas of color where some of the colors will pool together and it can look really distracting it can look terrible and it is one of the biggest fears of working with hand dyed yarns you know we're attracted to the nuance and the variation of these skeins but then when they knit up we get all frustrated by the nuance and the variation of the skeins so to prevent this very issue we can introduce more mixing and blending of those skeins in order to break up that rhythmic cycle of color so by that I mean two alternate skeins so for any garment project like this one I will alternate between at least two if not three skeins of yarn at any given time so if I'm knitting flat back and forth then I'll knit across and back with one skein of yarn drop that one and then pick up the second strand of yarn knit across and back with that one and so that's two rows so two rows and then two rows with another couple another ball of yarn and then two rows and then another two so if I'm feeling particularly energetic I might alternate with three balls by knitting across with one row and then knitting a second row with the second ball knitting a third row with a third ball and then when I go to knit the fourth row I pick up the first ball that I was using so each time knitting across one and then dropping that yarn and then picking up the one that was left behind and then knit across and then drop that one and so this is the way that I try to produce the most evenly blended hand dyed color and this is a very very easy way to prevent that unwanted pooling number four is a fear of knots nobody likes knots I know they're annoying when I first started knitting one of my favorite things to do was to buy yarn on cones so that I could just knit an entire sweater straight off of a cone of yarn and never have to deal with joining yarns but then when I became a hand Dyer I came to realize that getting a yarn on cones was a pain because then I'd have to wind them into Hanks before I could dye them and so I eventually needed to learn how to join yarns and then I began working at sort of worth yarn spinning meals and I saw how the yarn was being spun and how the spinning yarns would break and how the machines would automatically rejoin them in the spinning process I was also told by more than one spinning mill that it is in the yarn industry standard that one skein of yarn could have up to five knots in it and that would be considered okay so I don't know about you but I know that most knitters that I know would be pretty annoyed if they found five knots in one's gain so at Sweet Georgia we have this quality control process where every skein gets checked after it's dyed and dried and before it gets twisted and labeled so Charlotte literally looks over every single skein to make sure that it's okay so if the dyers are the packages or Charlotte notice that there's an unusually high number of knots in skåne we'll pull it out of the system but otherwise if it's just one or two knots in a skein we really encourage you to look at the tutorials that we've made about learning how to join yarns either at the edge or in the middle of a row it's not super difficult and it can really free you from this fear of knots in your yarn number five is the cost fear of cost for sure this is a big one and it goes hand in hand with the challenge of time nobody wants to spend a huge amount of financial resources in time on something that isn't going to turn out well so wrapped up in all of that fear is also creative decisions around choosing the right colors choosing the right pattern but for now let's just first talk about cost for me there's something that I learned very early on that has kind of guided my purchasing decisions since I was a since I was a kid and that is to always buy the highest quality and I can afford that doesn't mean to buy the most expensive brand it means buying fewer things but better things better quality things it's this idea of really considering the materiality of your material purchases will this fabric last will this fiber last will this yarn last will the garment that I make have longevity that honors the investment of my time into it so for me investing in a luxury natural fiber ensures that the project will last for a long time it is for this reason that Sweet Georgia doesn't die singles generally we maybe would make more business revenue in the short term if we did but it's not what I want to put out there for the long term so I want your knitted projects to last for a long time it's how I honor and respect your time and effort it's also how I respect your financial investment in this yarn so if you're only able to invest in one skein of our yarn that's perfectly fine just know that we worked really hard to make sure that this one skein of yarn will serve you well for as long as possible it's the fundamental principle here to maybe buy fewer things but better things number six is the fear of inconsistency now this is a very subtle fear because it's maybe a little bit related to the idea of pooling but I think it's really a fear that is unique to hand dyeing we love and we use hand dyed yarns because the colors present in a beautifully modeled tonal she moving way like they are beautifully inconsistent hand eye color is not flat or solid it's meant to have this shifting and unique appearance and so I found that one of the selling features of hand dyed yarns for many other dyers is this idea of uniqueness and that you never quite know what's going to come out of the iPod I've heard tires talk about the fact that they really enjoy that when they die the same caller way it always looks different every time they die in and it's fun and it's exciting for them as the dire to see the colors appear slightly differently every time they die it but just pause and think about that for a second from a knitters point of view how frustrating that would be as a knitter I think that as a knitter it would make me feel like I couldn't trust a particular colorway like if I like it this time will I like it next time will it be the same if I needed to buy an extra skein next time what if I need buy an extra skein because I need to knit the last part of my sleeve and I forgot to get an extra skein at the beginning and would I be able to find a color that would match what I already have so this is why we have another sort of fundamental principle to are dying at Sweet Georgia and that is to die everything as reliably and consistently as possible and I know it's not really it's not a sexy thing for an artist to be like we're going to be the most reliable and consistent dyers possible and make everything exactly the same way every single time it doesn't sound exciting or creative but honestly is not about us feeling artistic or creative all the time we're making supplies so that you can feel artistic and creative and you can't do that if you don't trust the supplies that you're working with so all this to say is that you don't have to fear that inconsistency with us like our goal is to die the same color from die lot to die lot and from dire to dire so you shouldn't be able to tell if Heather died dispatch or if David died this batch we want all the colorways to be as reliably consistent as possible number seven is the fear of not finding the right color I understand this fear for sure like when you're ordering online and you can't see the color in person it's very stressful right colors appear very differently on screen versus in real life so ideally we encourage you to buy your yarns in a local yarn shop where you can see it in front of you if your local yarn shop doesn't get to carry Sweet Georgia then please ask them to contact us and we can rectify that situation there is also a fear of choosing the wrong colors and so I created a whole bunch of content around that concept inside of the School of Sweet Georgia so we have the color play workshop which is all about creating color combinations and matching colors together and then we also have the color mastery course which includes a segment on personal seasonal color and about finding colors that look good on you but ultimately more recently I have given myself some new rules about choosing colors for my knitting in my weaving projects I made myself a little checklist so it's basically one do I like the color too does the color make me feel good and three does the color make me feel good about myself they all kind of sound like the same question but they are actually subtly different do I like the color is this a color that I enjoy looking at if I don't like age I'm never gonna be I'm never going to want to be surrounded by beige question number two is does this color make me feel good so I have a personal love of sunshine yellow and just looking at that lifts my mood so it has become a contender for the kind of color that I want in my life and number three does the color make me feel good about myself it's kind of related to finding colors that look good on me so if sunshine yellow is one of my favorites but it actually looks bad with my skin tone then I'll consider wearing it as a skirt rather than right next to my face so you can kind of go through a similar checklist to find the colors that will suit you number eight is the fear of not finding the right pattern before we had Ravelry you know I had to go to the public library to get knitting patterns I would go to the reference stacks where all of the vogue knitting magazines had been archived and they'd been bound into books and then I flipped through those books to find patterns now we have Ravelry in the internet and it's just like anna normal it's an enormous just an overwhelming wealth of it knitting patterns it's really hard to know where to start so we have our choice of patterns we can see what people have knit we can see what yarns they use we can see how garments turned out so finding the right pattern these days is more about learning how to match the yarns and the textures and the colors to the patterns and the techniques that are available so we will never tell you which pattern is the right pattern for you but my main guideline around using hand dyed yarns for knitting patterns is to consider how variegated or high contrast that yarn is so the more variegated or high contrast the colors in the yarn the simpler your knitting pattern needs to be so don't be using hand-painted yarns for things like complex lace knitting the colors in that hand-painted yarn are just going to obscure the texture and the pattern of your knitting and you likely won't be happy with the results number 9 is the fear of not being able to finish so that is what this entire vlog is about every week when I come here I'm mostly talking about my knitting and how hard it is to find time to do it and how I get distracted all the time by other projects it's one of the reasons why I make this vlog is to share my struggle because I think it might be possible that you have this same struggle and when we can share what we're going through we can get support and encouragement from each other like when I get a youtube comment that says hey where's that heat of food a cardigan then I remember that I was knitting that Hedo food a cardigan and maybe I should work on that next maybe I should find it so if you ever feel like you're worried about not finishing your knitting or your craft projects you can find support within the sweet georgia community we have that you know through Instagram we have a Ravelry group and we have a community forum at the school as we Georgia as well so right now in the school we are collectively working on our make nine projects we're working on brioche projects Tabitha is teaching a lace knitting workshop and I'm working on making more weaving projects so as we do it we're sharing our progress and that allows us to move inch by inch closer to that finish line if you would like more support and resources to help you finish your projects you can also check out my epic cloth workshop in the school and that comes with a workbook with like books that I recommend and tips and ideas and ways of working out your ideas too number 10 last but not least the fear that I will ruin it this is a big one this is this is like the situation where knitters buy yarn that they love and then it sits on a shelf for years and years because you're worried that you'll ruin it somehow okay so this is how I resolve this fear for myself I'm a foodie insofar as I really really really love food and I love eating I'm not great at cooking I like cooking I enjoy entertaining but I'm not a particularly good cook so if I get a beautiful heirloom tomato from the market and I take it home to cook it it's very possible that I might do a poor job of cooking it like maybe my knife skills aren't the greatest maybe some of my slices are gonna be thicker than others but in the end I'm still gonna eat that tomato and I'm still gonna enjoy it I'm gonna enjoy the color of the tomato maybe the modeled variation of the colors the shine of the skin the texture the flavor the tang enos maybe the sweetness I'm going to experience every bit of the sensation of that tomato did I ruin it no I experienced it all of it like I extracted the enjoyment that I could out of it and that's what I want for you as you're working with the skein of hand dyed yarn I don't want you to fear it or think that you're not good enough for the yarn I want you to look at it enjoy the richness and the new ones of the color enjoy the feel of it in your hands enjoy just the feel of making those stitches to extract the sensation the experience and the enjoyment of working with that yarn and never fearing that ruin it because as I have come to believe there's always more where that came from so that is it for today I hope that you might have found some support some encouragement some suggestions some ideas in the things that I've said today that's ten big scary things about working with hand dyed yarns that hopefully we can overcome as we make our knitting projects and are weaving projects so if you liked this episode please do hit the like button and if you would like to see more content like this please do hit subscribe and hit the bell for the notifications and you will find out about every time we release a new video which is typically every Friday thank you guys so much for watching and I will see you in the next episode [Music]

Channel: SweetGeorgia

Views: 17,455

Keywords: sweetgeorgia yarns, knitting podcast, knitting vlog, knitting podcasts on youtube, hand-dyed yarn, felicia lo, sweet georgia yarns, knitting yarn, knitting podcasts canada, sweet georgia podcast, hand-dyed yarns, school of sweetgeorgia, hand dyed yarn, fibre arts, knitting vlogs, knitting blog, fibre arts vlog, sweet georgia yarn youtube, yarn stash, hand dyed yarn techniques

Id: cPGsvOGz9h4

Length: 27min 58sec (1678 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 21 2020